Benjamin Omoike
Nigeria, July 11, 2016 – The 8th edition of the Wole Soyinka media lecture Series holds on Wednesday July 13 by 10 am at the main hall of NECA House, Hakeem Balogun Street, off Lateef Jakande Road, Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos.
This year’s lecture will focus on the theme, “Tax Education, National Development and the Role of the Media”. Adebimpe Balogun, the first female President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), will deliver the lecture commemorating the 82nd birthday of Wole Soyinka. Discussing alongside Balogun will be, Auwal Musa (Rafsanjani), Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Modupe Oyekunle, President of NECA’s Network of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW), Simon Kolawole, Publisher of The Cable Newspaper, Emuesiri Agbeyi, Tax Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Deremi Atanda, Executive Director of Systemspecs. Opeyemi Agbaje, Managing Director of Resources and Trust Company will moderate the event. Tunde Fowler, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has also confirmed the agency’s participation.
The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), intends to use the lecture to contribute to strategic thinking and provide a veritable opportunity to raise critical questions for national debate on issues surrounding taxation. These will include the importance of taxation to development, evaluating the compliance rate, technology driven payment, the lack of trust for wise use of funds generated by the government, the level of reportage of the issue in the media and many more.
The lecture is an annual programme of the organisation designed to examine varying topical issues that have a reverberating effect on the perceived performance of the media on the health of Nigeria, and its democracy. It has since 2009 held on 13 July, to honour Soyinka, while also drawing attention to critical national issues.
Admittance to the event is open to journalists, accountants, lawyers, tax experts and agencies, pressure groups, policy makers, members of the diplomatic corps and other stakeholders in the civil society.
